Mr. Fabien Santini:

I would not challenge the point that they are commodities. If you look at a dashboard of commodity prices in general, clearly, there are products that are viewed as commodities, meaning that they are traded widely and there are people who are building future markets on it. There are financial operators that are taking the risk for them. It is the same for oil, gas and the energy markets. Fertilisers are treated the same. There are similar instruments for metals and minerals. Definitively, they can be treated as commodities. It is not necessarily only due to the fact that the sector is concentrated. I am not judging the fertiliser industry specifically, but the agriculture inputs in general are characterised by the same elements as the food processing industry and retail. They are more concentrated than the farming sector. In general, there are actors that have more power and there is an asymmetry of power in the chain in respect of the weaker link. There are no small producers of fertiliser in Europe. They do not exist. There are some small retailers, but the big market is among the big retailers. There is also some concentration in the food industry. There is much less concentration in farming. One of the indicators of concentration that we use to assess this economic structure is the concentration ratio. For example, CR5 measures how much of the market share the five biggest companies represent. Looking at retail, food industry or inputs, it is very often above 50% or even more in some cases for some markets. Looking at what share of the market the five bigger farms represent, in some eastern countries that have inherited the socialist structures, it is below 0.1% of the market share. There is a real complete setting. That precisely explains why, in the treaty and in the work of the Commission, there are many possibilities to derogate to traditional competition rules in the farming sectors to compensate for that. That is why there is the possibility to establish co-operatives and producer organisations that agree on prices and quantities. It is also why interbranch activities can be developed and the conclusion of agreements is permitted, to a certain extent, including with the rest of the chain that are derogating to competition rules. This would not exist if it were not for the asymmetry between the concentration of the partners in the food supply chain and the farmers.